Caine Mutiny, The - Herman Wouk [57]
“I see. Get your hand off that light, please.”
“Yes, sir.” He complied with a yank. The captain took a long breath, expelled it slowly, then spoke in patient tones. “I should make something clear to you, Mister Keith. The communication facilities of a ship have nothing in common with a public pay telephone. Only one person aboard this ship has the authority to originate messages, and that is myself, so hereafter-”
“This was in no sense an official message, sir. Just hello-”
“Confound it, Keith, you wait till I’m through talking! Whenever this ship breaks radio or visual silence for any reason whatever, with any manner of signal whatever, that is an official communication for which I and I alone am held responsible! Is that clear, now?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I just didn’t know, but-”
De Vriess turned and snarled at the signalman, “Damn it to hell, Engstrand, are you asleep on watch? This light is your responsibility.”
“I know, sir.” Engstrand hung his head.
“The fact that some officer happens to be uniformed on communication procedure is no excuse for you. Even if the exec puts a hand on that light you’re supposed to kick him the hell across the bridge away from it. That happens again, you’re out ten liberties. Get on the ball!”
He stalked off into the wheelhouse. Engstrand glanced reproachfully at Willie and walked to the other side of the bridge. Willie stared out to sea, his face burning. “The boor, the big stupid egotistic boor,” he thought. “Looking for any excuse to throw his weight around. Picking on the signalman to humiliate me more. The sadist, the Prussian, the moron.”
CHAPTER 10
The Lost Message
At four o’clock the minesweepers formed a slanting line, a thousand yards apart, and began to launch their sweep gear. Willie went to the fantail to watch.
He could make no sense of the activity. The equipment was a foul tangle of greasy cables, shackles, floats, lines, and chains. Half a dozen deck hands stripped to the waist swarmed about under the eye of Maryk, uttering hoarse cries and warnings larded with horrible obscenities as they wrestled the junk here and there on the heaving fantail. Waves broke over their ankles when the ship rolled, and water sloshed around the gear. To Willie’s eye it was a scene of confusion, and panic. He surmised that the Caine crew were unfitted for their jobs, and were fulfilling the ancient adage:
When in danger or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.
After twenty minutes of this bawling and brawling, the boatswain’s mate in charge of the war dance, a chunky, frog-voiced, frantic chief named Bellison, shouted, “All set to starboard, Mr. Maryk!”
Willie, perched clear of the water on an immense steam windlass, expressed to himself a strong doubt that anything was really “set” in that heap of scrap metal.
“Keith,” yelled Maryk, “get clear of that windlass.”
Willie jumped into an arriving wave, soaking his trousers halfway to the knees; waded to the after-deckhouse ladder, and climbed up to see what would happen. The sailors cranked an egg-shaped paravane up on a crane. At a word from Maryk, they dumped all the gear over the side. Came clanks, rattles, splashes, yells, puffing of steam, creaking turns of the windlass, and a frenzy of running around, and a great cadenza of obscenity. Then sudden quiet ensued. The paravane was streaming neatly outward to starboard in a fanning arc, sinking slowly beneath the surface with a red float above it to mark the place. The serried cutting cable payed out from the windlass evenly. All was correct and orderly as a diagram in the minesweeping manual.
The wild scramble began again with the gear of the port paravane. Willie was no longer sure whether the faultless first launching had been a matter of luck or skill. When the turmoil and blasphemy reached their height as before he was inclined to attribute it to luck. But splash, grind, yowls, curses, silence-and the second paravane was streaming as neatly